Stories about life, hiking, and running and living life to the fullest.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

British Isles 2014 Trip Day 5 - At Sea to Edinburgh

Introduction

The trip from Ireland to Edinburgh is a long one. Basically you enter the Irish Sea, head north and hug the northern sections of England before turning south and entering Edinburgh. It was actually a very beautiful trip.

I was a little worried about being bored and at times I was. I did take advantage of the downtime though and rested and spent time with the people who had joined me on the trip.

I wound up waking up in the morning fairly late. I jumped into the buffet line and had my typical breakfast. I later re-entered the buffet for a sampling of their sushi. I am not a huge fan of sushi, but they had your typical selection that you'd normally find at any buffet.

Afternoon

I spent most of the early afternoon in a food coma. I watched the scenery go by from either the poolside deck or in the Tahitian lounge. While we were several miles from the coast, you could certainly tell that the area was desolate as well as very beautiful.

I finally acquiesced and went to the casino. I had passed by it several times and while at sea, the casino was open. However, I wasn't on this cruise to gamble and the casino in all honesty was tiny. They had about 20 old school IGT slot machines, about 10 WMS older video slot machines and 5 video poker machines. They also had "real" 3-card poker, black jack and roulette. I wound up putting in $20 into a machine -- mostly to kill some time. It lasted about 15 minutes and I got very little action / play out of it. It was disappointing and I really wasn't in the mood to gamble.

I did a fair amount of people watching. I did see some people running on the outdoor track. It was about 14 laps to a mile and it was solid concrete. I tried going about a mile before I gave up. Just about every joint in my body hurt and the constant turning put a lot of pressure on my calf. It was also insanely boring. It felt like a treadmill despite the scenery around me.

Outdoor track

I went to the lounge and listened to Sinatra records while socializing with people. I like Sinatra quite a bit and it was nice to watch the coastline drift by while listening to his music.

My nightly mojito

Dinner

I was chomping on the bit for stuff to do. I wound up seeing Lovena Fox play. She was pretty good and played a lot of cover songs from a variety of artists. She was also on several of the cruise tours so it was nice to "mingle with the stars" Afterwards, the Princess dancers came out and I saw their show as well.

Dinner was one I had been looking forward to for a while. They finally wheeled out the lobster and prawns and I certainly had my way with them.